Paul Sudhakar Menon (1922 – 2002)
Sudhakar was born in an aristocratic and well-to-do Menon family – staunch upper caste Hindus – from the village of Vadavanoor in the Palakkad District of Kerala, one of the southern-most States of India.
His father, Pangunni Menon, an Inspector of Schools in the Nilgiris, was cousin to V.K.Krishna Menon, former Defence Minister of India.
Sudhakar’s mother, R. Vesuamma, was a grand-daughter of the Raja of Kollengode. Vesuamma’s compassion for the poor and marginalised was remarkable. She wore only khadi clothes, and was involved in the struggle for the freedom of India from British rule, being associated with other freedom fighters such as Laxmi N. Menon and Leela Menon.
Having lost his father when he was barely eight years old, Sudhakar’s childhood was dominated by strong matriarchal influences. As part of the joint-family, all the children of the family were brought up in a traditional Hindu manner, with Sudhakar’s grandmother sitting on a tiger-skin to read aloud a regular portion of the Ramaayana and the Mahaabhaarata, and to ensure that the children recited their prayers in Sanskrit.
As a young boy, Sudhakar became keenly interested in the events and characters of the Bhagavad Geeta. At the age of nine, he started reading the Vedas and the Upanishads. He was not physically robust, and was oriented towards learning and knowledge. He always scored top marks in Mathematics and, after completing his schooling in the Government School, Kollengode (Palakkad), he was admitted to Presidency College, Madras, from which he took a First in his B. A. (Hons) in Economics.
He put his own experience like this: “My earliest recollections are of the deep religious faith practised by my grandmother. She had intense faith in God and regularly worshipped Him in temples. She used to read aloud the Mahaabhaarata and Raamaayana, the epics of Hinduism. Right from my childhood, the spiritual and moral teachings of these books were part of my being. As a child, I remember hearing the Geeta recited daily. None of my relatives were fanatical; they were God-fearing and broad-minded. My parents, though devout Hindus, had respect and regard for other religions.
“Being a native of Kerala, which is the home of Shankara, the prime exponent of the Advaita philosophy, his teachings had a special attraction for me.
“The death of my father when I was eight years old left a deep void in my life. I turned to religion to know the meaning of life and death. The problem of suffering made me study our Scriptures in the hope of solving this mystery. My aim was to live a life consistent with the teachings of our Scriptures, namely the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Geeta.
“Along with my secular education both in school and in University, I was studying Hinduism in depth, not only as an intellectual pursuit, but also in the silence of meditation and contemplation.
“Whereas the Vedas are the response to the awe and the wonders of the mystery around us, the Upanishads delve into the depths of man’s being, probing into the secrets of the soul. The Geeta, with its teaching on yoga, which means “union”, satisfies man’s eternal longing for love, an abiding union with God who is the source of all life and the ground of all being. These scriptures, with their time-tested and age-old truths, were shaping my life and influencing my behaviour.
“I finished my education and entered the college. Those were the days when my country was fighting for independence from British rule, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. His example and life were a model to me. His constant reference to the Geeta, and to the dictates of his inner voice, made a very deep impression on me. As a student, I too joined the Satyagraha movement and the Quit India movement, but religion attracted me more than politics, and so I started looking to Aurobindo, to Rabindranath Tagore and, more than anyone else, to Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (who later became President of India). It was the philosophy of Dr Radhakrishnan that occupied most of my studies. It was through him that I gained an insight into Hinduism as it relates to other religions in the world. It was Dr Radhakrishnan’s teachings that instilled in me not only a sense of pride in the religious heritage of India, but also a widening of my mental horizons so that I could respect and revere all religions. Though I used to admire Swami Vivekananda’s scholarship and missionary zeal, yet it was Dr Radhakrishnan’s teachings that opened the age-old truths and enlarged my vision”.
Sudhakar had one important conversation with Dr Radhakrishnan, who was the father of his friend and neighbour, Dr Gopal. Sudhakar was a regular visitor to the home of his friend, so Sudhakar often met and spoke with Dr Radhakrishnan. Totally awed as Sudhakar was by the intellect of Dr Radhakrishnan, he once requested Dr Radhakrishnan to be his Guru. But Dr Radhakrishnan’s response was most unexpected: “Sudhakar, I don’t have all the qualities of a real Guru. Jesus Christ was the greatest Guru who ever walked on this earth. If you want a Guru, it should be him and not me”. As the statement came from a Hindu scholar of Dr Radhakrishnan’s name and fame, Sudhakar was simply stunned. Despite being a staunch Hindu, he felt compelled to read the Bible in order to find out more about the “the greatest Guru”. At that time, probably neither of them had the faintest idea of the far-reaching effect of Dr Radhakrishnan’s statement, but it turned out to be the starting point of Sudhakar’s serious search for Truth.
“Christianity, as I found it professed and practiced in my childhood and youth, had very little attraction for me. In my part of India, Christianity could be clearly recognised in terms of castes. Occasionally, a few converts came from another (higher) caste. These were exceptions. The main body consisted of third- and fourth-generation people whose ancestors had become converts as groups.
“Secondly, Christianity as projected by the missionaries and practiced by the churches appeared Western. The ritual, the worship, the preaching techniques, the craze for instant and visible results, the philosophical insights, and the dependence of the churches on money from the West, made me think that Christianity had little or no use for the religious heritage of India. I thought that the Christian religion was something imposed on India.
“The ancient Syrian churches in Kerala were exceptions, but then as a youth I never came across anyone from these churches who showed me Jesus Christ in the Indian context.
“I read, in my eagerness to know Jesus Christ, some of the theological works of Christianity, but it appeared to me that they were answering the questions of people in a Greco-Roman culture. The questions that arose in my mind about ultimate reality remained unanswered in the Christianity that I saw.
“Yet I could not get away from Jesus. I knew that Christians had worshipped him for nineteen hundred years and that He was real to many.
“So I turned to the study of the Bible. I could not understand the Old Testament. Then I began reading the New Testament, beginning with the Gospel of Matthew….”
Sudhakar became a sought-after speaker, delighting and enlightening audiences in every State of India, as well as in numerous countries abroad from Australia to the U.K..
Details of his book, Seeking God, Seeking Moksha are available at: https://www.amazon.in/Seeking-Moksha-Foreword-Rahil-Patel/dp/1913738159/
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